


Fade Into You

by rendawnie



Series: Pieces [17]
Category: B.A.P
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bars and Pubs, Broken Engagement, Closure, Conversations, Drinking, Estrangement, Future, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Reunions, idolverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 18:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11811921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: Moon Jongup walks into a bar...Soundtrack: "Fade Into You", Mazzy Star





	Fade Into You

Himchan taps his empty wine glass on the bar, frowning in the direction of the bartender. He’s being ignored. He wonders what caused this rift between them, whether it was asking if they had a 2009 Bordeaux close at hand, or the way he ungratefully drank the bottom of the barrel dregs he was given instead. It doesn’t really matter at this point, because he’d just like his glass to be full again.

He taps louder, until he’s sure the _clinks_ could be heard at any spot in the bar, and the bartender lifts his head finally, his concentration on wiping down glasses with a wet rag broken. There’s a small jerk of the chin, which Himchan decides to assume is an invitation for his next request.

“I’d like a beer, please,” he says after a moment, and then he bites his lip. He doesn’t even like beer, not really. It’s a pedestrian drink. Wine is his alcohol of choice, with very few exceptions. Today is rapidly becoming an exception, and Himchan’s not really sure why, except that he’s here to get thoroughly drunk, and the vinegar he’s been served so far isn’t doing the job.

The bartender raises an eyebrow suspiciously, but he complies, filling a tall glass with amber liquid and placing it in front of Himchan.

Himchan stares at it for a long time. He doesn’t drink it.

He doesn’t drink it, and then he’s about to, except he’s interrupted by the last voice he expected to hear ever again.

“When did you start drinking beer?”

Hichan freezes with his hand around the cold, wet glass. He swallows once, hard, his grip on the beer tightening. He almost doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want to get himself into whatever this is going to be.

He looks.

Jongup is smiling just a little, sitting two stools away at the bar. Himchan is very sure he wasn’t there before. He could be a hallucination. He tries to remember how much cheap wine he’s had, but he gives up halfway through the calculations, when it dawns on him that he should maybe answer Jongup.

Answer, or run away, or yell, or cry. One of those things.

He doesn’t look at Jongup’s face again. Not yet. He’s got to work up to that. Instead, Himchan stares at Jongup’s chest when he replies.

“Today. Sort of.”

Jongup chuckles softly. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

Himchan wants to chuckle, wants to match the gentle humor he knows would be in Jongup’s eyes if he looked, but it feels like there’s a bowling ball in his throat, one made of all the words they could have said to each other in the last two years. All the words he thought he’d never get a chance to say. He wonders how many of them will make it out of his mouth, today.

He makes some sort of half-strangled grunt as a reply and takes a cautious sip of his beer. It’s not _bad,_ exactly. It’s just not wine. Himchan rolls it around on his tongue, trying to get used to it, and then forces it down into his stomach. It’s fine. It’ll do.

It’s enough to make him lift his eyes again, intentionally this time, with purpose. Enough to make him really look at Jongup for the first time in a very long time.

He looks different. Older, just a little, until he smiles enough to show his teeth and then Himchan remembers everything all at once.

Himchan’s not talking, not enough to carry on a conversation, so Jongup tries for him.

“How’ve you been? It’s been a while.”

Himchan doesn’t answer. He studies Jongup’s dark blonde hair silently. He wonders if maybe he’s more drunk than his calculations allowed for.

“I’ve been fine,” Jongup says next. He sounds perfectly calm. Himchan knows that doesn’t mean he is. “Just in town working with a new dance crew for a while. What are you doing in Los Angeles?”

“Working,” Himchan answers immediately, relieved for a safe topic. “Curating a new exhibit on ancient Korean instruments at the art museum. It’s been really fun. Kind of a relief, actually. I was sort of...I was...for a while. And then, I...came here, and...I’m still sort of...but. With work? At least?”

He’s floundering, and he knows it, and Jongup saves him from it, just like he always used to do.

“That’s awesome, hyung. I’m proud of you. I think it’s really great that you’re getting to do things you...love,” Jongup says, and that word, those four letters, they all hit Himchan right in the heart he’s been trying to forget he has and he can feel all the things they left unsaid bubbling onto his tongue and he could try and stop them, but he might never see Moon Jongup again, he never thought he’d see him again anyway, and so Himchan just starts saying them.

“I can’t believe you,” Himchan begins, and then he stops, licking his lips. Buying a few seconds of time to think before he launches into it again.

“I can’t believe you would do this. First, you ruin my life in Korea, my _actual_ life, not my idol life, then you disappear for like, _years,_ complete _years,_ Jongup, not that I wanted to talk to you or tried but I _heard things,_ from everybody, and then you show up here, at this exact bar in California, a million miles away from home when I’m just trying to not entertain the thought of you for five fucking seconds. Honestly, how dare you.”

It’s not a question.

Himchan lets the words sit between them for a minute while he cools down, while he gulps some more of his beer without looking at Jongup, and Jongup waits and lets him. Himchan thinks he knows what sort of expression will be on Jongup’s face when he looks back up. No expression, most likely. Moon Jongup has the world’s best poker face, and Himchan hates it. He always hated it.

When he finally does look, Jongup’s frowning, just a little, but Himchan knows, he remembers, that in the swirling mess of Jongup’s emotions, an actual visible frown is somewhat akin to any other person bursting into tears, so he frowns, too.

“I’m sorry, I--” Himchan starts, but Jongup cuts him off.

“Please, don’t apologize. I want you to say everything you want to say. I’m the one who should apologize. I’m sorry, Himchan. I’m sorry for everything.” Jongup looks up at him, stops saying the words to his hands, clasped in his lap. “I’m sorry.”

Himchan rubs his face with his palms, trying to regroup. He shoves his beer further away from him. Jongup doesn’t have a drink.

He’s waiting. Waiting patiently for whatever else Himchan wants to get off his chest, and honestly, it’s so _Jongup_ of him that it’s infuriating.

“I can’t believe…” Himchan says again, then trails off. He thinks some more, collecting himself enough to continue. “I can’t believe you. The night before my wedding. Which you were supposed to be in. Which cost her parents so, _so_ much money.”

Jongup snorts, and it’s so quiet that Himchan almost misses it. “Is that what you’re mad about? The money?”

Himchan drops his hands onto the bar, and they slam down louder than he means for them to. It kind of hurts, actually, but it’s cutting through the vague alcohol haze and Himchan needs to be clearer, so he’ll take it.

He sighs. “No. Jesus. No, that’s not what I’m mad about, you asshole.”

A moment later, he thinks to amend the statement. “What I _was_ mad about, anyway. I haven’t been...I haven’t been angry about it in...in a long time.”

Jongup sighs too, and Himchan glances up again. Jongup’s not frowning anymore. He slides Himchan’s beer away and over to rest in front of himself instead, waits a beat, and sips it carefully. Himchan doesn’t stop him. It’s just _so Jongup._

“I just think...I _thought_...I thought it was strange. That you never knew, hyung,” Jongup says finally.

Himchan’s looking at the floor when he answers. “I knew. I knew, I guess. I just...I couldn’t. I couldn’t.” He watches Jongup wrap his hand around the beer tighter.

“I get it, hyung. I was scared too. But it had been so long. So long of knowing. Knowing how I...and then you...you started dating her, and...I didn’t think it would last, honestly. I thought you would just get it out of your system and then realize the truth. So I waited. I’m good at waiting.” Jongup laughs a little.

“Yeah, until you’re fucking not,” Himchan snarks back, snapping at the bartender for another drink and then resolving to tip him double because Himchan’s being a dick and he knows it.

“Until I’m not,” Jongup agrees. “I waited, and you kept dating her, and then we...that one night...and I thought things would change after that, I really did. I wanted them to. So I waited.”

Himchan picks at the label on his newly acquired beer, a bottle this time. “I told my mom after that night. I told her how I felt about you, and that I didn’t want to...I didn’t want to keep dating anyone else, and…”

Jongup stares at the ceiling. “And?”

“And she told me I should settle down and get married and forget about you.”

Jongup’s head drops onto the bar with a loud thud, and he groans. Himchan’s not sure if it’s because of the dull pain undoubtedly in his forehead now, or this entire situation.

“I like your mom, but god _damn,_ lady,” Jongup mutters, and it’s not quite muffled enough for Himchan to miss. It makes him laugh for the first time. He’s still chuckling when Jongup picks his head up, rubbing his forehead, the corners of his mouth turned down into a pout.

Himchan thinks about it all. He thinks about the years they spent avoiding the truth, then stepping a little too close to it for comfort, then pulling back so far that it all got destroyed. He thinks about the look on Jongup’s face when he knocked on Himchan’s hotel room door the night before Himchan’s wedding. He thinks about how much hope was in Jongup’s eyes, hope and fear and confusion and most of all, love. He thinks about the words Jongup said almost before Himchan could pull him into the room.

_I love you, hyung, and I’ve loved you for a long time, and please don’t marry her. Please._

Himchan didn’t marry her. But, he didn’t marry Jongup either, so, there was that.

He didn’t marry her. He left, an hour after Jongup left his hotel room in tears. He took a private plane off Jeju, and then a plane from Seoul to Tokyo, and he hasn’t stayed in one place longer than six months ever since.

He knows Jongup left, too, right on his heels. He knows that much, because Youngjae called him constantly in that first year, updating him on every move Jongup was making. Reminding him what an incredible idiot he’d been.

After a year, Youngjae gave up.

It was Yongguk’s turn after that, when Himchan ventured back to Korea for a while. It was months of conversations, months of Himchan crying on his shoulder, and more than a little of Yongguk smacking him around, verbally, for his transgressions. For resisting what had been obvious to everyone else for so long that by the time Himchan was confronted with it, at the wrong place and the wrong time and at the end of Jongup’s rope, it was just too late.

By the time he understood that what he'd lost was so much bigger than the rest of the fears he'd had, it was just too late.

Himchan shakes his head a little, forcing himself back to reality. He knows what he has to do.

“Jongup, I don’t think we can be friends. It’s too...it’s too... _broken._ Y’know?” He expects to feel worse about that statement. But it feels...peaceful. This all feels like closure, suddenly.

Jongup nods. “I know.”

Himchan waits for him to go on. He doesn’t.

“I’m sorry, too,” Himchan says after a while, since this is it, and he needs to say everything. “I’m sorry. I loved you. I was so in love with you, Jongup, and I’m sorry I was scared and that it all got messed up. I wish...I wish it was different.”

Jongup smiles a little sadly when Himchan looks at him again. He slides off his barstool, pushing his hands into his pockets. Himchan watches his fists clench and unclench inside the denim, and he understands. He knows Jongup wants to hug him, more than anything. Wants to hold him. But they both know he can’t, because it would make everything _too much._

Himchan understands.

“It’s okay, hyung. It’s exactly how it’s supposed to be, y’know?” Jongup murmurs.

_Moon Jongup, ladies and gentlemen. Always so accepting of life and it’s bullshit, until he’s fucking not._

Himchan watches Jongup pay for Himchan’s entire afternoon of drinks. He watches Jongup write his phone number on the back of the receipt and leave it on the bar as close to Himchan as he dares to, even though they both know Himchan won't take it. He watches Jongup clear his throat and turn to leave the bar, and then he watches him turn back around for a moment.

“Take care of yourself, Himchan,” Jongup says finally. “You look like shit.”

Himchan watches him walk out of the bar, and then he glances back at the receipt with Jongup’s number on it.

He reaches his hand out towards it hesitantly, then pulls it back.

Then he reaches out again.


End file.
